Mary Lee Taylor

Erma Perham Proetz (1891 – August 1944) was an American advertising executive and the first woman inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame, in 1952. A copywriter, she did most of her noted work at St. Louis, Missouri firm Gardner Advertising Company. There, her work for the PET Milk Company, makers of evaporated milk, was instrumental. She created a PET milk test kitchen and developed recipes. Under the pseudonym Mary Lee Taylor, Proetz wrote articles and made radio broadcasts sharing her ideas with consumers. The character, Mary Lee Taylor, was billed as "nutritionist and home economist" for the PET Milk Company. The show that debuted at the height of the Great Depression with "Mary Lee Taylor" initially providing economic recipes, various cooking tips and, of course, clever ways to cook with the sponsor's product, PET Milk. Eventually, the segments expanded to 30 minutes and the format changed. The first half of the show featured a soap opera called "The Story of the Week", which centered on a young married couple, Jim and Sally Carter. The second half of the show featured Mary Lee Taylor and her PET Milk infused recipes. In the 1940s, she starting offering free recipe books by mail for the listeners, booklets that are highly sought after by cooking enthusiasts even today.